“There’s an elephant in the room, and it’s infecting your relationship.”

A thought by Mike Bechtle from his book, Dealing with the Elephant in the Room: Moving from Tough Conversations to Healthy Communication (p. 23). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

So, is that true of you?  Is it?

Earlier Mike said, “An elephant is in the room when something obvious is going on and nobody talks about it, and we pretend it’s not there.” 

He says, “Like a malignant growth, you avoid talking about it for fear that it will be real. If we ignore it, we think it doesn’t exist.”

He goes on, “Part of the problem is that we get used to having the elephant around. We don’t talk about it, and it becomes easier to ignore over time. We don’t notice that it’s growing, because it happens slowly. It’s like when someone hasn’t seen our kids for six months, and they’re amazed at how much the kids have grown. We don’t notice the growth because it has been so gradual. But to anyone else, it’s obvious.

“Toxic communication patterns in our relationships also start slowly, and we don’t want to talk about them. They’re uncomfortable. After a while, we get used to those patterns and they seem normal. It’s like mold growing behind our walls. If we don’t do the hard work of dealing with the patterns, our relationship could be in jeopardy.

He says, “Nobody likes tough conversations. They’re not nearly as much fun as easy conversations. But they’re the key to keeping the elephants out of the room. If the elephants are already big, it’s going to take significantly more work to remove them, and the conversations could be painful.

“The best approach is to have the tough conversations when the elephant is little. Someone has to have the courage to identify the elephant and start talking about it.

“Too often, people see the elephant and start blaming each other for letting it in the room. They work against each other instead of working together to solve the problem. Meanwhile, the elephant wanders around the room fluffing the pillows and deciding where to sleep.

He finished this section by saying, “We get in trouble when we see each other as the problem instead of the elephant.”

So, is there an elephant that is infecting your relationships?  Don’t you think that this would be a good time before the holiday season begins to have that tough conversation?  Would you ask God to give you the courage and wisdom and the words to say? 

Yes, yes!